U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves as he arrives for jury duty at Manhattan Supreme Court in New York August 17, 2015.Lucas Jackson
Donald Trump, the bombastic billionaire whose caustic mix of misogyny, bellicosity and nativism stirs the souls of bitter right-wingers, has emerged from the news-scarce haze of summer to enliven the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
Some fevered pundits see The Donald as a major new force in American politics, tapping a deep vein of citizen outrage over paralytic political dysfunction in Washington, while providing a simple, powerful populist message and a promise of get-it-done leadership.
There's nothing nuanced about Mr. Trump, the property magnate and reality TV star.
Here's his battle plan for crushing Islamic State's nascent caliphate: "Go in, knock the hell out of them and take the oil."
On the hot-button issue of immigration, Mr. Trump vows to round up and deport all 11-million-plus undocumented immigrants and then force Mexico to build a 3,100-kilometre-long wall to cage in its people – "rapists," as he recently called them, and other criminals included. And if the Mexicans balk, he warns, "I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall."
And on trade: "NAFTA's been a disaster," declares Mr. Trump, who promises to tear up the cornerstone agreement binding Canada and Mexico to the United States.
Make me president and I'll "Make America Great Again," says Mr. Trump, whose bright red baseball cap carries the same slogan.
Yet the more he sounds off, the higher he soars in polls, at least among the Republican faithful of a certain ilk. He's a media darling, eclipsing the rest of the 17 declared Republican presidential hopefuls, whether he's emerging from a TRUMP-emblazoned black helicopter at the Iowa State Fair or bounding out of a stretch limo to report for jury duty in New York City.
At 25 per cent, Mr. Trump's support is double his nearest GOP rival, and the rest of the Republican field look like also-rans.
But Mr. Trump has a long road ahead, one that needs more than flash and bombast. He may have the money, but he still needs a ground game for the hard slog of door-knocking and list-making and robocalls and ads. The Iowa caucuses are on Feb. 1, signalling the beginning of the real primary race.
Conventional political wisdom says the early hotshots in the long slog through scores of state primaries usually crash and burn and are long forgotten by the time most Americans – currently far too busy enjoying summer – start paying serious attention to politics early in an election year.
After all, who recalls that eight years ago this week, in the summer of 2007, Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, led all Republican presidential hopefuls with 29 per cent – more than double the support of second-placer Fred Thompson? The eventual GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain, was a distant fourth with 7 per cent.
Or that in the summer of 2011, Representative Michelle Bachmann, a populist beloved of the Tea Party (and best known perhaps for some bizarre claims, including, "English was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible"), was the Republican front-runner in a July poll – followed by Herman Cain. Eventual candidate Mitt Romney was third.
It's not just Republicans who usually opt for more serious, more electable nominees, after the early fringe or populist candidates flame out.
Howard Dean, a doctor who promised universal health care and ran a wildly popular grassroots campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in 2004, led in almost all of the polls until the first primary, when he got trounced and never recovered.
In this election cycle, populists from both parties are creating trouble for more centrist, establishment candidates. Mr. Trump is way ahead of the rest of the crowded Republican field, while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist and long-serving independent, is attracting huge crowds and passionate support, and is proving a major problem for Hillary Clinton.
Even Mr. Trump sees populist parallels between his candidacy and that of Mr. Sanders, despite being ideological opposites.
"He's struck a nerve on the other side and I've struck, I think, an even bigger nerve on the Republican side, the conservative side. It's amazing," Mr. Trump said of Mr. Sanders.
Larry Sabato, who heads the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, calls Mr. Trump the "un-nominatable front-runner."
"Trump is an early-season fling for many people, fun while it lasts but doomed to break up," Mr. Sabato wrote this week in his widely followed Crystal Ball. "The Summer of Trump is unlikely to turn into a Year of Trump, much less four years of President Trump. Current front-runner? No question. The Republican nominee for president? Doubtful in the extreme."
Some savvy political analysts think 2016 may herald a new era.
"It may well turn out that the outsider candidates burn brightly for a while and then, as we get closer to actual contests and the nomination, they fizzle out as they have in the past," says Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think-tank.
But this time may be different, Mr. Ornstein said on To the Point, a current-affairs radio program. "There is a higher level of anger that Washington has screwed up everything and can't get anything done ... and you have the amplification of tribal media and social media."
Meanwhile, Democrats are crossing their political fingers hoping the Grand Old Party leaps into the abyss of the political unknown by choosing Mr. Trump, and thus manages to alienate not just minorities and (many) women on both sides of the partisan divide.
For Democrats, the only thing better than a triumphant Trump as the official Republican candidate would be an embittered loser Trump willing to bet a few hundred million on himself to run as an independent and siphon sufficient votes to doom Republican dreams of regaining the White House.